As vlogs are growing more and more popular, why not encouraging your students to do something similar, but without the video part?
In my opinion, this activity is great for students who are shy and don’t like to see themselves on video. It should be much easier to encourage them to only record their voice.
The aim of the task is very simple. Students record their weekly journal about a given topic. It can be anything, you can choose one or leave it to them to choose.
Why don’t they write about how their week went? Or maybe what would they do if they were abducted by aliens? Or how would they manage on deserted island?
Personally, I recommend this website as it has lots of creative topics and questions.
They can record themselves as a homework or you can devote some time for it once a week. However, it would be much more comfortable and practical for them to do it at home as they will have some time to think about what to say and no one will disturb them during recording process.
You may wonder what to do with these recordings later. Well, you can always have your students listen to several of their classmates recordings and comment on them. This way you would encourage positive classroom environment and practice not only speaking, but also listening skills.